Tell Me How You Really Feel

by Aminah Mae Safi

  Tragedy was in their bones.

  This actor pulled it out of her character, she pulled it out of the story, and she pulled it out of the audience, even though she was probably long dead now. And Rachel was reading subtitles. She couldn’t imagine what it would have been like to a native speaker.

  “Who is she?” Rachel whispered.

  The woman onscreen was doing a dance of lament, cutting her feet on glass, bleeding her love out, quite literally. This level of melodrama made Joan Crawford look tame, made Bette Davis look subtle. Rachel lived for this kind of shit. It was incredible.

  “Meena Kumari,” said Sana. The reverence in her tone was plain. “Queen of the Bollywood Tragedies.”

  “Ah,” said Rachel, like she understood. Because she did. She really did.

  “Yeah,” said Sana, her voice still hushed, her attention still singularly focused on the screen. “She died from alcoholism, basically. Nobody could rival her, not for tragedies, for years. Not really.”

  “That I believe.”

  “Plus, dying young, she was immortalized a bit. The way Marilyn Monroe was. Forever young. Forever beautiful.”

  Rachel had nothing to say to that. She had too much to say to that.

  But Sana, still mesmerized, didn’t seem to notice. She kept on talking. “I wanted to be her when I was little. ‘I wanna look like Meena Kumari when I grow up,’ I used to say. My dadu is from what’s now Pakistan, but his mother was Bengali. The same as Meena Kumari. I felt like I understood her, somehow. Then Mamani would give me a lecture on the tragic lives of Bollywood actors. Especially the actresses. Loose morals, Mamani would say. But that only added to the prestige for me. I think I was so obsessed with the idea of being tragically beautiful, from all these old Bollywood films.”

  “My mom was beautiful like that.” Rachel felt Sana’s gaze snap from the TV to her. Rachel didn’t know where that confession had come from. Didn’t know how Sana managed to pull them out of her. Maybe that was Rachel’s tragedy. She just wanted to tell Sana things, wanted to let her in.

  But Rachel kept on talking anyway, careless of the consequences. “She looked like Hedy Lamarr. A little darker. But tragically beautiful. Femme fatale. She had it, looks-wise. But she couldn’t get a toehold, acting-wise. Happens a lot in this town, when everyone thinks pretty girls, even stunningly beautiful ones, are a dime a dozen. Especially when they’ve got a bit of a Mexican Spanish lilt to their English. And then she hit thirty and her acting career was over. Imagine your career ending not by even looking thirty, but by casting directors knowing you were. I think she thought having me would fill the void. Give her life meaning. Purpose. That’s what everyone told her. Settle down. Have kids. She’d find that peace again.” Rachel laughed, a harsh, bitter sound she hadn’t meant to release. She looked away from the TV and saw the intensity of the sorrow in Sana’s eyes. Not pity, thank God. Just a bone-deep sense of sadness.

  And that’s when the floodgates really opened—when Rachel realized there was no going back and she didn’t want to go back in any case. “When she left. We—my dad and I—we thought she had run as far and as fast from the town that had eaten her alive. I guess it kept us from taking it personally. Or more personally. But she hadn’t run far at all. We ran into her at a Pavilions in Brentwood. She was with some guy—looked like a manager or a producer or something. She nodded our way, once, and changed aisles. That was it. She was done.”

  “That’s awful.”

  “Yeah. I spent so much time being angry. At her for leaving and not even having the decency to run far. At a world that told her motherhood would give her meaning. A world that took her career and twisted it and warped it until her looks were all she thought she had to sell. Dad fell apart after that.”

  Rachel couldn’t look away from Sana’s unflinching gaze. Maybe this was what people meant when they said cleansed by fire. Her ears were ringing, her whole body was flush with fresh anger and resentment, yet she could not look away. And Sana wouldn’t.

  The credits were rolling and Rachel had no idea how the film ended. “That was the day we met, you and I. The next day. The morning after. I wish I could forget that, but I can’t.”

  Sana’s mouth pressed into a firm line. Disappointment? Determination? Rachel didn’t know her well enough to know for sure. Sana looked away then. She grabbed the remote, clicking the TV off. She got up, smoothing out her skirt as she did. “Come on, let’s go.”

  “Where?” Rachel felt as bewildered as she knew she sounded.

  Sana turned, flashing a brief but full smile. “We’re getting fro-yo.”

  17

  Retro Classic

  Sana

  Sana watched as Rachel waited for the seat belt to slide slowly, clickingly, into place. Sana was ready with her usual apologetic explanation. “It was like a thing in the nineties. Before everyone wore seat belts. They made them automatic. Safety first.”

  Rachel raised an eyebrow. “Safety first? That’s it? These are the most annoying seat belts known to man and all you’ve got to say about it is ‘safety-fucking-first.’”

  Sana frowned.

  Rachel sighed. “Sorry. For the cursing. But really.”

  “My mom paid seven hundred bucks for her freedom. She didn’t care if it came with literal strings attached. As long as the strings weren’t attached to anyone else. That’s just how she is. She’ll take the horrible car, as long as it’s hers and its quirks are hers and its problems are hers.”

  “Ah,” said Rachel, like she understood. And maybe she did.

  “She could afford a new one now. I mean, it’s never fun to buy a new car. But she’s got the cash to do it.”

  “Why doesn’t she?”

  “I guess she likes to remember where she came from. After the pregnancy, after the divorce. Like she can handle anything life throws at her.”

  Rachel didn’t say anything to that.

  “But I think she also likes being the production designer, head of all that she’s head of, now on a big-deal production and driving one of the crappiest cars on the lot.”

  Rachel laughed. “That I understand. I think if I could, I’d keep my beat-ass Continental. There’s something about it. It’s mine. Somehow it’s mine.”

  Sana turned off of Palms and onto Centinela. “Exactly. That’s how Mom feels about it exactly. You can’t tell her anything.”

  Rachel shook her head. “I see where you get it.”

  Sana’s jaw dropped. She looked over briefly, still affronted. “Excuse me, people can tell me things.”

  Rachel scoffed. “Like what?”

  “Like,” said Sana, suddenly at a loss. “How mitosis works.”

  “Oh, how mitosis works. Excellent. You don’t think you’re innately an expert in cellular biology. How gratifying to know.”

  Sana made a noise between a squeal and a grunt. “Says the literal director of a project who couldn’t give up control if she ever wanted to, which she also doesn’t.”

  Sana flicked her gaze over to Rachel. Rachel was grinning. A real, honest-to-goodness grin. It nearly caused Sana to swerve, it was so potent. It was like the rain after a drought. Two days of torrential downpour that threatened to destroy as much as it provided life-giving water.

  “Says the perfect athlete with her hair always slicked back in the sleekest ponytail I have ever seen.” Then Rachel pointed, nearly smacking the dashboard. “Hey! Watch the road!”

  “Right.” Sana shook out her head, focusing ahead. She shouldn’t have taken her concentration off of the road. She had the ability to focus, to hyperfocus, to zone in on one thing so intensely she saw nothing else. Right now, nothing else needed to be anything that wasn’t the road. But Rachel seemed to be forever pulling Sana’s focus.

  “I’m not perfect and neither is my hair.” Sana didn’t know why she needed to say it, but she did. She needed Rachel to understand. “And neither is Helen of Troy. We’re people. You aren’t the only one to miss that. But we’re just people who
are trying to get what we’ve always wanted. It’s just, sometimes you don’t realize what it is that you’ve wanted until you’ve had it. And then it’s too late.”

  “And what did you want?” When Rachel focused on a thing, she gave it all of her attention. It was dizzying to be on the other side of it.

  Sana kept her eyes on the road. “To go to Princeton.”

  Rachel was still looking over Sana, like she’d been given an opportunity and she wasn’t going to waste it. “And how does it feel now that you have it?”

  “I don’t know.” And then Sana said something she’d never told another living soul. Never let out. Never confessed one hundred percent, even when her dad had said that he knew. He didn’t get why. He didn’t understand her anxieties. “I haven’t put down my deposit. For Princeton. If I don’t do it by May first, I’m toast. I pulled all my other applications because I applied early.”

  Rachel drew in a breath, drew away from Sana. “You’re just going to throw your future into the wind?”

  Sana shook her head. She felt a pressure in her eyes but she kept watching the rhythm of the road. The movement of the lights of the cars. The city was passing her by. But she was in the driver’s seat. She could stop the car anytime she wanted; she kept driving. “I applied for a medical fellowship in India.”

  “Why?” asked Rachel.

  “I don’t know,” Sana confessed. “I just had to do it. Had to have something that was mine.”

  Rachel reached out, her hand hovering over Sana’s on the gearbox. But Rachel pulled her hand away. “Look. Don’t let other people force you into a decision just because it sounds good. I’ve seen what that looks like firsthand. It’s better to screw up on your own terms than to screw up on somebody else’s. It’s better to have something you know is yours rather than what everyone tells you that you should want.”

  Rachel turned away, breaking the moment. Like she needed not to focus on Sana for a moment. Like she too needed to watch the palm trees and the jacarandas and the jasmine bushes swooshing by as they drove.

  Sana made it the rest of the way into Beverly Hills without incident. Rachel seemed to understand that Sana needed to not be distracted as she drove. And the silence—which should have been, if not tense, then at least awkward—was a calming, reassuring thing.

  She drove to the frozen yogurt shop. Not like those photo-worthy shops that were popping up all over downtown LA and beyond. This was old school and authentic LA. The kind where you could get four types of frozen yogurt and sixteen types of toppings and nobody could or would say a thing. A palace of infinite possibility, a temple to every hedonistic impulse Sana possessed.

  Well, maybe not every impulse.

  “This looks legit,” said Rachel, looking out the window.

  Sana finished her parallel parking before responding. “It’s the best. I mean, it’s my favorite.”

  “The best, then.” There it was, that grin.

  Sana felt her heartbeat in her throat. She couldn’t look away from Rachel. Her eyes flitted from the other girl’s eyes to her mouth back to her eyes again.

  Don’t stare at her mouth, oh my goodness, do not stare at her mouth.

  Except, when Sana’s eyes flickered back up to Rachel’s, Sana realized Rachel was staring at her mouth.

  The air in the car went very still. Maybe it left the car entirely, because Sana couldn’t breathe. She felt like some horrible frozen robot.

  Sorry, no longer computing. Rachel Recht just looked at my mouth. Impossible to say if this model will ever reboot again.

  Then Rachel licked her bottom lip and Sana was pretty sure air was overrated and she really didn’t need it anymore to survive. But she did need to know desperately how soft Rachel’s lips were. She might die if she didn’t learn that in the next ten seconds. Some doctor would have to write that down under “Cause of Death” on the form, right next to “Time of Death,” which was, for sure, seconds away.

  And then Sana saw it, Rachel pushing the button to unclip herself from the seat, watched Rachel leaning in toward her. It was magic and perfect and probably about to be one of the most romantic moments of her life.

  That’s when Rachel’s body went slamming backward into the chair.

  “What the fuck?” That was Rachel.

  Sana couldn’t even be mad about the swearing. Because, what the fuck indeed.

  It had been the seat belt. Still around Rachel’s shoulder, still attached to the car. The safety-first seat belt. Sana wanted to be like liquid nitrogen—go from a solid directly to a gas. To disappear, with no trace left of her but a slight fog where her once corporeal form had been.

  Sana closed her eyes. “I’ve never hated a car so much in my entire life.”

  And then a miracle happened. A real, live miracle. Rachel Recht laughed. At Sana’s joke. Sana opened her eyes, staring at Rachel in what must have been awe. That’s what she felt. Awestruck.

  Rachel opened the door, sighing her relief when the seat belt began sliding away from her. “Come on, let’s try the best yogurt in LA.” Rachel was out of the car before Sana could open her own door and release her own seat belt.

  Mom really needed to get a new car like ASAP.

  Rachel got cookies-and-cream frozen yogurt with strawberries and a few strawberry boba. It was a tame choice, by Sana’s standards.

  Sana, for her own part, got cheesecake and passionfruit and milk chocolate yogurt with Oreos and strawberry boba and gummy bears and actual chunks of cheesecake. Not everyone was into the cold, hard gummy bear thing, but it was one of Sana’s favorites. She loved chewing through the tough sugar until she released its inner sweetness.

  Sana had a red gummy bear in her mouth, clacking against her teeth as she ate the rest of her bite of yogurt.

  “You know.” Rachel was eating her yogurt in these large, fantastic spoonfuls. She made the fro-yo look better than anything that could be eaten on planet Earth. “I think you’re brave.”

  Sana nearly choked on the gummy bear. “What? Why?”

  Rachel shrugged, like she hadn’t been upending Sana’s world all evening. “I always wanted to get my helix pierced, but I’ve never been able to work up the nerve. You’ve got your nose pierced. That’s gotta be even worse.”

  Unconsciously, Sana raised her hand to the gold ring on her nose. She forgot she was holding her spoon and dotted fro-yo in her hair. She wiped the yogurt away on her arm. “You can always work up the nerve for a piercing.”

  “Maybe. Usually I chicken out.”

  Sana turned to Rachel then. “Hey, would you mind driving?”

  Rachel stared at the offered keys for a moment. “You want me to drive?”

  Sana nodded, very sure of the decision. She’d used up all of her focus driving them to the fro-yo place. And that was before the almost but not quite kiss moment. “I’m too easily distracted. And you’re done with your fro-yo already anyway. Please?”

  Rachel stared for a long moment and Sana couldn’t read her expression.

  “Alright,” said Rachel.

  Sana dropped the worn, smoothed-out keys into Rachel’s hands.

  Rachel

  Rachel was paying attention as she drove. She knew she’d been entrusted with a great privilege. But she hadn’t been one to let great privilege make her cocky.

  No, if anything, being afforded more privilege made Rachel more careful, more cautious. There was now more in her hands to screw up. Not just a movie. Not just a friendship. Or whatever this was. But somebody’s car.

  Somebody’s car that meant something to them.

  That, Rachel had understood from the beginning. It was strange really, how much about Sana that Rachel did understand, implicitly. It was stranger still to realize that the understanding went both ways.

  Mutual understanding. Rachel shivered.

  “Are you cold?” Sana asked, concern in her voice. She was reaching for the old vents in the car. There must have been a trick to getting them to blow air the exact right tem
perature.

  “Yeah,” said Rachel, even though she wasn’t.

  Sana fussed with the direction of the vents, turning one off to one side and another off to the opposite direction. The air streams blew into one another and skidded away from Rachel. Then Sana turned up the fan but turned the temperature one tiny, almost imperceptible tick up.

  Sana smiled. She had such a pleasant smile. A ray-of-sunshine kind of smile. A Debbie Reynolds kind of thing, it was. “There, that should do it. You should be comfortable now.”

  Rachel was sure that she’d never be comfortable in Sana’s presence again.

  I almost kissed her.

  Thank God for safety belts. Rachel wasn’t sure what had possessed her to do it. Sana was just sitting there, flitting her gaze between Rachel’s mouth and Rachel’s eyes like that wouldn’t have some kind of effect on any normal person from even the most average-looking of people. And Sana was not average-looking. And for some stupid reason, the worst idea in the world had popped into Rachel’s head. Just lean in and kiss her.

  Right, like that would ever happen. Sana just looked like that. Rachel had seen it, on camera. That was just the girl’s face. Thank God for weird nineties seat belts or Rachel would have made a real ass of herself.

  Safety first, indeed.

  Except Sana had looked as jarred by the seat belt snapping Rachel back as Rachel had felt. If Rachel hadn’t known better, she would have called the look on Sana’s face disappointment. But it couldn’t have been that. Rachel couldn’t even entertain the idea of it having been that.

  Sana was still eating her fro-yo. She’d gotten a hell of a lot more frozen yogurt than Rachel could have ever stomached, but Sana was one of those people who savored dessert. She seemed to really enjoy it, slowly taking bite after bite. Chipping away until eventually there would be nothing left but small puddles of melted yogurt—remnants of what once had been but now no longer was.